喜马拉雅黄耆 xi ma la ya huang qi

Astragalus levitubus H. T. Tsai & T. T. Yu.

Plants 10-30 cm tall, with soft hairs 0.5-1 mm. Stems sev­eral, slender, up to 2 mm thick, sparsely covered with ascending white hairs. Leaves 2-7 cm; stipules 6-15 mm, ciliate; petiole short, like rachis slender, glabrous or sparsely hairy; leaflets in 3-6(-8) pairs, elliptic, 4-11 × 2-6 mm, abaxially sparsely ap­pressed white hairy at margin and especially at midvein, adax­ially glabrous. Racemes densely 6-12-flowered; rachis densely black hairy; peduncle 1.5-16 cm, sparsely white hairy, toward top increasingly spreading black hairy; bracts whitish to greenish, linear-acute, 3-6 mm, black ciliate. Calyx campan­ulate, 4.5-7 mm, not gibbous at base, with truncate mouth, tube glabrous; teeth 1.5-3 mm, black hairy. Petals yellow or purple, often dark purplish brown when dry, all of same length; stan­dard widely obtriangular to widely obovate, 11-12 × 6-8 mm. Legumes stipitate, narrowly ellipsoid, ca. 1.5 cm, very densely covered with appressed black hairs, acuminate at both ends.

Alpine meadows; 3500-4900 m. Qinghai, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Xi­zang, Yunnan [Bhutan, India, Nepal].